The Roundup: Fall 2016 Volume 11

In this week’s installment…

It’s the last Roundup of the season and the entire year. Join us in bidding a tearful farewell to Yuri On Ice and a temporary “see ya later” to Classicaloid and March Comes In Like a Lion, which we’ll pick back up next season.

Girlish Number
Episode 11: “Wavering Chitose and Determined Gojo”

Jel: This episode was a bit slow but the payoff was good. It’s the first time I felt any sympathy for Chitose. She’s been on the same page as Kuzu up until now, but with both facing a crisis in confidence you can see they are quite different on the inside. Whereas Kuzu is still petty human garbage, Chitose’s insecurities are all too real. We all want the kind of attention Chitose wants if we’re honest with ourselves, she can just be a bit selfish and tactless in how she goes about getting it. Yae mustering the courage to talk to Gojo was probably the emotional turning point and props to him for knowing it was time to ease up on being critical. Overall it was a solid climax, and I’m looking forward to Chitose’s come back in the final episode.

Artemis:Man, this episode felt short! That’s a compliment, by the way – technically we got roughly three minutes more footage than usual since there was no OP or ED, but the episode still whizzed by so damn fast that I was actually double-checking the length at both the halfway and end point. It was also an incredibly satisfying episode, with the best possible outcome(s) despite Yuri not winning gold. It’s not that I like Yurio more than Yuri and was therefore rooting for him more; it’s that the only way to have gotten Yuri to stay on the ice, with or without Victor, was for him to deliver a performance he was absolutely satisfied with and yet not quite earn that coveted top spot on the podium. He needed to prove something to both himself and to Victor, but he also needed to be challenged by, and ultimately lose to, someone technically better. Of course, I find the idea of Victor returning to world-competitive ice skating while simultaneously coaching Yuri (or anybody at all for that matter) to be incredibly farfetched. That didn’t exactly stop my fangirling though – especially if it happens to inspire the heavily-implied second season – so I can only criticize so much. Like Yuri, Victor belongs on the ice. And since the fangirl train kept on running right through to the final scene with the exhibition skate, I can’t imagine that this episode would have disappointed anyone who’s been watching and enjoying the series so far. Basically, Yuri on Ice delivered up until the very end, and I couldn’t be happier about that. These tears are happy tears.

ClassicaLoid
Episode 12: “J. S. Bach”

Jel: With so many other good shows this season, I feel like Classicaloid doesn’t get the attention it deserves. It’s hilarious, it’s creative, and it’s got a lot heart. This episode raises the stakes and adds a sense of purpose that could make the show truly special. The main theme was hinted at a few episodes ago when Beetes gave his fancy prize guitar to the humble street performer that inspired him. Here it’s spelled out rather explicitly in the form of an awesome, over the top Musik battle that I’ve been wanting from the beginning. Beetes and Motes’ showdown with Bach-sama opens up so much potential for the second half. What kind of escalating madness will we see by the end of this all? Could we end up with Gurren Lagann galaxy flinging levels of insanity? I wouldn’t be surprised and I can’t wait to find out.

Classicaloid – A fitting final image for 2016

March Comes In Like a Lion
Episode 11: “Chapter 22 The Old Year / Chapter 23 The New Year”

Jel: Had March ended this week I probably would have voted for it as my favorite show of the year (sneaky plug: we will have our Top 10 anime of 2016 later this week, stay tuned). This episode was the perfect follow up to Rei’s emotional outburst last week. Pouring out his feelings was a healthy start, but he still has a lot of healing to do. My heart swelled the entire episode as Akari and the family took care of him, and I nearly broke down when she talked about missing her mother and grandmother. Can I just give them all a hug? Grandpa included. It was also interesting that they showed his adoptive father cares about him beyond shogi. We’ve really only seen his negative side from Rei’s perspective, so it’s cool to see he’s not just a one-dimensional bad guy. I’m sure Rei will have plenty of other challenges as the show continues, but this was an extremely satisfying break in the drama.

Marlin:March has been everything I could have ever hoped for this season, and this episode really took the cake. I’ve certainly never been closer to full-on tears watching an anime than seeing him look over at Kawamoto’s drawers seeing the same kinds of stickers he and his sister got yelled at for all those years ago. It was such a powerful combination of nostalgia and grief for Rei and Akari that spoke to why these two have found such a close connection. While there’s always time for the show to implode ala the end of Honey and Clover, I’m waiting on bated breath for every new episode.

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5 thoughts on “The Roundup: Fall 2016 Volume 11”

I certainly don’t dislike “March Comes in Like a Lion,” but I can’t quite get behind the praise it receives here and elsewhere. Everything about it just seems so…conventional, I guess? Rote, maybe? To me, it’s a perfectly competent anime soap opera, but as a result, pretty unengaging, on the whole. I mean, the thing with the stickers was so heavily telegraphed, it just left me ice cold – even though I can honestly say that plenty of anime have moved me to full-on tears!

I just want to annotate that Yurio is not “technically better” than Yuuri. Yuuri has more variety and difficulty in his jumps and spins, plus his monstrous stamina and is known for having great step sequences which gave him high interpretative points (PCS), which were consistently a problem for Yurio. The figure skating fans following the show have broken down how absolutely impossible it is that Yurio took that gold (and that world record, for that matter). While I definitely won’t say I’m dissatisfied with the ending, I do feel that Yurio’s win felt forced and the fact that they hammered down Yuuri’s (and Victor’s) desire for gold so much throughout the series only for him to “lose” did make it a little bit more bitter than I expected. But I’m eagerly anticipating season 2, and I hope they confirm it soon because the uncertainty is killing me.

I think it could be argued either way. As far as the Grand Prix goes, Yurio did much better in the first skate than Yuri did, Yuri did better than Yurio in the second skate. Personally speaking, I think Yurio is indeed technically a better skater than Yuri, if only because he has so much more confidence and therefore consistency – but I’m certainly no professional and that’s just my own opinion. I find I don’t particularly care either way about what figure skating fans think of the whole Yuri vs. Yurio debate. Predictable though it was, I was very satisfied with the conclusion, and am likewise greatly looking forward to news of a second season.

While it is true that Yurio did better than Yuuri in terms of skating a clean program in the short, Yuuri actually had a higher base technical score and his one mistake honestly was a minor one and wouldn’t have granted enough deductions to make Yuuri’s under 100 score reasonable. Compare to Yurio’s much harsher fall in the free that still somehow allowed him to make 200 points. This is what I mean in terms of how it felt forced. Yurio’s score for the short program was impossibly high and Yuuri’s unfairly low, which was clearly a contrivance to 1) have each Yuri break one record and 2) make Yurio win. It’s not really a matter of people’s opinions but the actual math of how figure skating is judged irl. Not to say the show had to be 100% accurate because that’s absurd, but it felt the writing went a bit too out of its way to make Yuuri not win, which made the result not feel as organic as the rest of the show had always been.

It’s still my favorite show of the year, mind you, but I wish they had found a more natural way to explain Yuuri’s loss, and that, if they were planning to make him lose from the start, that they hadn’t hammered us so hard with Yuuri’s desire to “win and eat katsudon with Victor” that as of now, remains unrealized ):. Like maybe give more focus to Yuuri wanting to prove himself that he was worthy and that, even if he didn’t win the gold, if he could “skate in the way he felt best” that would be enough. But even that uplifting phrase is said by Victor in the context of “the best shortcut for a gold medal”, yet Yuuri skated his best out there and still didn’t make it. That’s the only thing I found most anticlimactic in the ending.